The Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams MP, has hit back at the
attack in a Sunday newspaper* by Progressive Democrats leader
Mary Harney on Sinn Fein's economic policies.

Mr Adams said the PDs are motivated by concern for a rich and
privileged elite rather than the community as a whole. ``Mary
Harney is jointly in charge of a state with unprecedented wealth
from a boomng economy but cannot manage the crises our people
have to cope with every day in transport chaos, education,
housing and hospital waiting lists.''

Mr Adams said:

``Mary Harney may be worried about Sinn Fein's economic policies,
but what is there to fear in building the houses, paying the
worker an adequate wage, educating our children and ensuring that
each day they can look forward to proper clothes, nourishing food
and warm homes? What is wrong in wanting to ensure equity in
education and health care?

``The PDs think it is wrong because their party and their policies
are for the rich, the economic establishment that is benefiting
from the economic boom oblivious to those being exploited by it
and, worse still, indifferent to those left behind.''

``Mary Harney believes that the last 13 years of the 26-County
state has created an economic miracle. Everybody recognises the
huge strides made by the 26-County economy over recent years -
but the difference between Sinn Fein and the Progressive
Democrats is that Sinn Fein can clearly see that not everyone is
enjoying the `miracle'.

``How is the miracle going to help the 40,000 people on local
authority waiting lists with little hope of having a proper home?

``How is it going to help the tens of thousands of people who have
seen their rents double and double again?

``How is it going to help the people who have found work but have
also found themselves condemned to a life-time of low pay and a
subsistence standard of living?

``Mary Harney promises that those on the minimum wage will be
taken out of the tax net during the life-time of this government.
This could have been done with Charlie McCreevy's first budget
in 1997. Instead he chose to reward the well-off and the rich. He
cut the higher rates of tax, halving Capital Gains Tax, while
leaving the lowest section of society out of the bonanza. Mary
Harney went along with this inequity.

``At least 170,000 children are today living in poverty.
Thousands more are suffering deprivation according to research
recently published by Combat Poverty. How will Mary Harney's
miracle help these people? She has clearly failed them.

``Central to creating an equitable society is the need to Share
the Wealth.''